


kiss me on the mouth & set me free (but please don't bite)

by chrysanthemumsies



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Also John Kind Of Sucks, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunk John, Gay Sex, Happy Ending, Infidelity, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Romance, Sherlock Is Not Okay, Smut, Unrequited Love, switchlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-08-31 13:48:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8580913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysanthemumsies/pseuds/chrysanthemumsies
Summary: Five times John got drunk and slept with Sherlock, and the one time Sherlock got drunk and couldn't do the same. .Title cred goes to "Bite" by Troye Sivan.





	1. after the pool incident

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned! There's as much angst as there is smut in this, but no worries, I promise a happy ending :^) 
> 
> Follow my blog [@chrysanthemumsies](http://chrysanthemumsies.tumblr.com/) for all things Johnlock and fic related!
> 
> ** Title used to be 'let me be your taste test' from 'Ghost' by Halsey, but it didn't fit very well so I changed it.

**1.**

After the pool incident, Sherlock thought that John had seemed a bit… off.

The man was unpredictable, so Sherlock wasn’t sure how much good his ‘expert opinion’ was in this circumstance. John had seen death and had brushed it himself once before, so it wasn’t a near-death state of shock that he was reacting to. There hadn’t been a flare-up of his PTSD (his nightmares had waned over the last few months, and Sherlock hadn’t heard him screaming in weeks), and his limp was still a non-issue. On paper, John Watson was perfectly fine.

But, as Sherlock watched with narrowed eyes as John stared at the kettle until it boiled as if in a state of trance, there was something irrefutably ‘up’ with John that couldn’t be defined.

With John, though, Sherlock had little tact, so it didn’t take long for the issue to bubble to the surface.

“Moriarty,” Sherlock began one morning over toast, eyes training unblinkingly at John and teacup up to his lips. At the word John’s eyes flashed up, mouth pursing and spine straightening hard for a split moment before he forcibly relaxed. He turned his eyes back down to the newspaper in his hands as if he hadn’t just reacted. Telling, very telling.

“What about him?” He asked with careful nonchalance.

Sherlock set down his cup, only breaking his stare to lift a jam-slathered slice of toast to his mouth. “You shouldn’t let him bother you. You’re not the one he’s after.”

Technically a lie, but John didn’t need to know that. Sherlock hardly made sense of it himself. John didn’t look up from the paper, but he lifted it slightly and his grip on it tightened at the words. “I’m not…” He soon realized that lying was pointless, so he folded the paper with a sigh and tossed it off to the side. He played with his own slice, eyes trained downward. “How can you be so sure?” He asked quietly.

Sherlock shrugged, leaning back in his seat. He brushed off the crumbs from his lap. “You were used as a pawn, but it’s doubtful he would repeat a performance. Jim Moriarty is like the playwright for an extravagant Broadway script; he’s writing his own rules, but he loathes cliches and anything the audience can predict.” Sherlock absentmindedly pressed at his lips with his finger, thoughtful. “We’re nearly at the end of Act 1, I’d think. Something’s coming, but I don’t have enough data to precisely figure out what. It’s utterly exciting.”

Another hefty sigh, and John pushed away his plate with a grimace. “How good for you two,” he muttered.

Sherlock ignored that, eyes drinking in what they can from John’s appearance. “You’ve lost a half-stone in the two weeks since the ordeal,” Sherlock commented. “You need to eat more.”

John quirked his lips. “You’re telling me,” he joked.

“Yes, well,” Sherlock said, trying to keep his mouth from curving at the corners. “I prefer my doctors healthy and at the top of their game, you understand.”

“Mmm,” John hummed back, mirthful.

“I can’t have a skeleton running after me while we’re chasing criminals, you see. People might talk.”

“I’m under the impression that people do little else.” John replied lightly, sipping at his tea.

Sherlock gave into his smile this time, and the room fell into the most comfortable silence it’s had in the last two weeks.

 

*** * ***

 

“Sh’lock! I’m home!” John yelled from the doorway, even though Sherlock was currently in his armchair typing from John’s laptop. He glanced up, and in one sweep he was able to deduce that not only was John _drunk_ , but he was the more rarely-seen form of it: he was _wasted._

Against the door, John giggled and began to slide down to the floor. With a roll of his eyes, Sherlock set the laptop aside to stretch to his feet, legs stiff from disuse. “John,” he greeted with disinterest, maneuvering around the messy living room to stand before the pile of the man. “Welcome home. I’m assuming you’re sleeping at the doorway tonight?”

John hummed through a smile, body slid all the way down until only his head was propped against the door, chin to his chest. “Yes,” he decided.

Sherlock nodded, and crouched down so he could be more level with the man. “You’re a doctor,” he commented. “Is this position comfortable enough for the human body to sustain overnight?”

John pretended to ponder it, though it was mostly him staring at nothing since he was so far gone. “Yes,” he eventually gurgled from his cramped position.

“No,” Sherlock corrected. “I’m going to help you up to your room now. Is that alright?”

“Yes,” said John.

Sherlock paused before moving into action. “Can you say anything other than yes?”

John’s eyes lit up. “No!” He replied triumphantly, face looking as if he was trying to damndest to control another fit of giggles. He struggled to push himself back up from the floor.

With a sigh, Sherlock helped him up with considerably more strength needed than he expected. He wrapped an arm around John’s waist and threw the other man’s arm over his shoulder, supporting the majority of his weight. From there on, Sherlock led them back through the doorway and towards the stairwell leading up to John’s bedroom. John had made it up the first flight of stairs; the second shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?

Sherlock was wrong. It took them roughly four minutes to get up a single flight of stairs, and from there John didn’t seem to be finished with Sherlock yet. Flopping onto his bed, he started at his belt.

“M’shoes,” he complained, halfheartedly kicking his feet together to slide his shoes off to no avail. “Please,” he added.

“Really?” Sherlock asked incredulously, though he was already moving into action and untying John’s trainers. “I’ll remember this night,” he warned without heat.

John snorted. “I won’t!”

Sherlock gave a mirroring snort, sliding off John’s socks with his shoes. The other man was fumbling with his belt, fingers heavy and uncoordinated. Sherlock made sure his sigh was loud and withering.

“Let me,” he said, beginning to lean forward to undo John’s belt himself.

It all seemed to happen at once. As Sherlock reached further over the bed, and as John began to sit up, their heads knocked together and noses pressed uncomfortably. Their lips didn’t even touch, Sherlock realized when he thought back on it. But at that moment, before John could flop back down and before Sherlock could apologize, the air just… _shifted._ John’s eyes this close were cobalt blue and hazy from his inebriation, unfocused on Sherlock’s eyes but suddenly and obviously enrapt when they dropped to his mouth. Sherlock could feel the other man’s heat against his skin and he felt his heart throb which much more force than usual.

_I’ll burn the heart out of you._

The room burned as hot as fire, and altogether both men fell into each other.

God, but it’s been years. Sherlock bit and slid his way into John’s mouth with vague familiarity of his movements, following John down to press him into the mattress. John, despite his not inconsiderable state of mind, was pleasantly skillful as he used his tongue, one hand threaded through Sherlock’s curls and the other kneading at his arse.

Sherlock had to remember that this was a heavily impaired man he was dealing with, so he pulled back reluctantly to ask: “Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, _yes,”_ John hissed impatiently, using his grip to both tug their hips flush against each other and yank Sherlock’s head back to nibble at his neck. Sherlock winced, but he was _definitely_ not averse, returning in a similar sense of frenzy as he gave himself into his long-dormant desires that were currently bubbling to the surface. When his hands dropped, it was to unbuckle John’s belt with a quick flick of his wrist, and to pop open the button of his jeans.

John groaned again, returning to Sherlock’s lips with fervor and reaching around to his back to push his shirt up to his shoulder blades. Taking the hint, Sherlock sat up to strip himself of his shirt and taking the time to unbuckle his own trousers. John watched him with hooded eyes, and Sherlock had to close his eyes with a hiss of breath when a hand pressed deliciously into his hardening groin. “That’s...” he muttered breathlessly.

“Yes,” John sighed, grinding his hips up into Sherlock’s arse where he was straddled. For a man as intoxicated as John, he seemed to have no problem maintaining an erection of his own. Sherlock leaned down just enough to brace his hands on John’s shoulders, and he gave another experimental roll of his hips.

John keened.

Starting at the sound, Sherlock rolled off to finish stripping himself, kicking off his trousers and pants along with his socks. John had barely managed his own shirt in the meantime, and his vest was slightly plastered to his skin. His hands were pushing at his jeans and pants, trying to free his cock to no avail.

Sherlock felt his blood heat at the sight. Dropping to his knees, Sherlock grabbed John’s waistband on either side to both free his erection and tug his hips closer to the edge. Hands dropping to dig into John’s clothed calves, Sherlock swallowed down his cock in one move.

“Sher-!” John shouted, cutting himself off to fall into a string of curses. His hips were thrusting shallowly, so Sherlock reached up to brace his forearm to his lower abdomen and keep him still. He released him with a pop, only to lick his way teasingly down the shaft and back to return his ministrations.

“Brilliant,” John was able to gasp, and an intense rush of arousal went straight to Sherlock’s groin. With his free hand, he reached down to wrap around himself and he nearly shuddered with relief. He moaned around John’s cock, and an extra bead of bitter precum dropped on his tongue.

A hand creeped back into Sherlock’s curls, just resting, and he didn’t mind. And then it tightened with a sharp pinch, and Sherlock nearly came just then.

Soon, John’s hips became frantic from what Sherlock could feel from beneath his arm. “Sherlock, I’m…” he warned, his hand releasing Sherlock’s hair to tangle into his bedsheets.

Sherlock pulled off and gripped around John’s erection to finish him off, licking down to his testicles and matching the pace with the hand around his own cock. John came over his abdomen with a cut off shout, hips bucking and legs flexing. When he became oversensitive, Sherlock released him and focused on himself, pressing his forehead into John’s thigh.

“I can…” John offered with a slur.

“Mmm,” Sherlock replied, head shaking. He was close, anyway. It’s been years since he’d even felt arousal; his hand vs. someone else’s hand didn’t really make a difference at this point. With a shudder and a heavy exhale, he came over John’s comforter and floor. When he glanced up, John was watching him with wide eyes.

“Beautiful,” he muttered, then unable to stop his eyes from closing and head from falling against the mattress. Sherlock lingered for a moment, catching his breath, before standing unsteadily on his feet.

“That was…” Sherlock started, and then stopped. He shook his head with a frown. “Good. It was good.”

“Good,” John replied simply. His voice was lower; he was nearly asleep. “M’sorry I din’t…”

Sherlock was gathering his clothes from the floor, only bothering to put back on his trousers. “No, no, don’t worry. It’s fine. All fine,” he said awkwardly.

John hummed, and he was too far gone from then on. Would he remember tonight, Sherlock wondered? It wouldn’t be hard to guess if he awoke in his current position, and Sherlock was hardly going to undress him further for bed. With a lasting, uncertain look, Sherlock took his leave and quietly shut the door behind him.

 

*** * ***

 

The next morning, Sherlock was at his microscope when John emerged from the shower. He glanced up, taking what he could from observation. Eyes hooded, movements careful: hungover. He had shaved, though there was a slight cut on his cheek. Still drunk? No, it’s been 10 hours, give or take; malnourished. Low blood sugar, shaky. He wouldn’t meet Sherlock’s eyes, even though he knew he was there.

He remembered last night.

“John,” Sherlock greeted, returning back to his microscope, though keeping his eyes trained on the other man above as he went into the kitchen and rummaged for a glass. “How are you feeling?”

A pause. “Like shit,” John admitted, pouring water from the tap. “That’s the last time I go to a coworker’s birthday party.”

He then stood at the entranceway to the kitchen, gaze trained on Sherlock as he drank and fiddled with the glass. He needed to say something. Sherlock leaned back in his seat to give him his full attention.

“Sherlock…” He began nervously. “About last night…”

Sherlock was expecting many things. He was expecting John to apologize, he was expecting John to skirt around the issue. Another part of him was even expecting John to ask if they could keep up the arrangement (as he had definitely shown Sherlock that he was _not_ against gay sex last night). But, as per usual, John said the thing that Sherlock _didn’t_ expect.

“I’m sorry I took advantage of you,” John said with a rush of air. “It was wrong of me, and it won’t happen again.”

Sherlock blinked, once. “You _do_ know that you were the one who was drunk, right?” He tried.

John shook his head. “I knew what was happening, and I didn’t stop myself. I know that you’re… against this sort of thing.”

Well, John wasn’t wrong. For nearly all of their brief acquaintance, Sherlock had shown not even an inch of sexual interest, because there wasn’t any there to begin with. Something changed last night, a switch flipped that caused Sherlock to be utterly and irretrievably attracted to John. Now, it was quiet again, but like a volcano; he could feel it just below the surface, dangerous and unpredictable. But, at the moment, the atmosphere was as it was before this whole issue, though maybe a bit more awkward.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock said eventually, tearing his eyes away. Because it _was_ fine; he could go without having sex with John Watson. He had gone 34 years without it before and he was perfectly neutral about the matter of it happening again.

“Good,” John said with a nod, shoulders relaxing as if he just shrugged off an invisible weight. “I promise, it’ll never happen again,” he added. He then disappeared back into the kitchen, more than likely to fix some breakfast.

The words Sherlock shouldn’t care about, the ones that some part of him wasn’t dreading to hear. He tried to shake it off, tilting his head back down to the microscope. But, for the oddest reason, the fact that what happened last night would _never_ happen again seemed to bite annoyingly at him.

“Huh,” Sherlock muttered absently, definitely _not_ disappointed. Not in the slightest.


	2. a week after baskerville

**2.**

“John! This way!”

Sherlock was running, running through dirty alleyways and over dumpsters and up fire escapes. He could hear John’s heavy footfalls far behind him sloshing through the filthy London water, and he deliberately slowed a bit to let the man catch up to him. A year ago, he wouldn’t have bothered; now that the blossoming fondness had grown into something akin to friendship, he had more of a… respect for the man. If that was the word.

Before, he had done what he pleased, going out all night without a word otherwise or destroying John’s jumpers or putting a milk carton of compost in the fridge and, overall, acting as though he still lived alone, though more accidentally than with purposeful displeasure. He realized that now. But ever since the pool incident, things had… shifted. He was still a selfish bastard, but John didn’t seem to mind it as much. And Sherlock had no qualms making exceptions to his nature, if it meant seeing John in a good mood. For the first time in his life, Sherlock had learned compromise.

And then there was the sex. But that was eleven months, one week, and six days ago; he was sure John had forgotten about it, really. Sherlock sure had, of course.

“Sherlock!” John’s voice broke into his thoughts, and he felt him stumble into his shoulder. “Why’d you stop?”

Why had Sherlock stopped, exactly? Oh, right; they were at a dead end. There was a ladder leading up to the roof, but it was severely rusted; he doubted Hawthorne had climbed it. There was a dumpster beside them, and Sherlock was positive he was in there. Recently rained, the rooftop above was tilted down so the run-off water ran into the alleyway; there should be water on the dumpster’s slightly-concave lid, but it was merely damp. Someone had recently opened it.

Sherlock texted their whereabouts to Lestrade, and gestured at the dumpster. John closed his mouth and shifted into military stance, hand reaching behind his back to the gun in his waistband. As always, Sherlock felt a rush of something pleasurable along his spine at the sight, but he pushed it away as best as he could. He reached for the lid.

‘Lestrade,’ John mouthed, shaking his head.

‘No time,’ Sherlock mouthed back. With a hard look, John only locked his jaw and pulled out his gun, flicking off the safety with the press of his thumb. He nodded to Sherlock, once.

With a silent exhale, Sherlock flipped open the lid with a great swing and jumped back, the sound of it hitting the wall harsh and sudden against his ears. When nothing immediate happened, John leaned forward to peek into the bin. He sighed and dropped his gun. “There’s nobody in there, Sherlock. Just… garbage.”

“Impossible,” Sherlock muttered, leaning further into the dumpster to observe. It smelled moldy, but not rotten. There was a layer of cardboard at the bottom. “This bin has been recently used, I’m sure of it.”

John shrugged, switching the safety back on his gun and shoving it into his waistband. “Maybe the garbage was recently taken from it,” he offered. Then he immediately winced at his words, regretful.

“Oh, really?” Sherlock asked sarcastically, rolling his eyes at the stupidity. At least John had realized the error of his words right after speaking them, so there was _some_ hope. “We hopped over a fence to get here, John. Do you really-”

“Yeah, yeah,” John interrupted, face to the sky and eyes closed as if he was restraining himself. “This dumpster hasn’t been used for its intended purpose for a while. I got it.”

Something about the wording alerted at something within Sherlock, like a lightbulb popping up without him knowing the reason. Sharpened, he surveyed the alley with a newfound fervor. “Intended purpose…” He muttered, before zeroing back in on the dumpster. Understanding dawned and he whirled around to John. “Brilliant!” He announced, grinning manically at the other man before turning on his heel and promptly diving into the bin himself.

Twenty minutes later, Sherlock was covered in mud from crawling through the hole in the ground hidden by the dumpster, and John was sporting a cut on his arm from tackling Hawthorne as he tried to escape. But Lestrade had shoved the similarly-filthy criminal into the back of his car and was walking towards the two men with a breezy smile.

“Three cases closed in the past week,” he commented, rubbing his hands together in the chill evening air. There were bags underneath his eyes, but he seemed more awake now than in the past few days. “I would have thought that the Baskerville case you told me about would have tired you both out.”

John shifted uncomfortably. Sherlock pretended not to notice. “Yes, well…” John began.

“I’m always eager to help with the Yard’s cases as long as it isn’t a waste of my time,” Sherlock said offhandedly, scratching at the dried mud on his sleeve and thanking the gods he hadn’t worn his Belstaff today. He nudged John lightly. “Come on, John, let’s head home. I’m in need of a shower.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Lestrade interrupted, voice oddly lilted and eyes alight with something worryingly delighted. “It’s been a successful week, and it’s our first free night in a while. Let’s say we go for a drink.”

Sherlock automatically felt offended at the offer, but before he could snap out a rejection John pushed forward. “We’d love to,” John interjected. Sherlock turned his glare onto him.

“We would?” He hissed.

John elbowed him shallowly in the side. “Yes, we would. You’re hungry and I need a drink.”

Sherlock scowled. He could just go home himself, he hardly needed John with him at all times. But he _was_ hungry, as all of his neglected human tendencies were rushing back with a force that was difficult to ignore. He didn’t deign John with a reply.

“Great!” Lestrade exclaimed, clapping John on the shoulder. “Donovan will take care of Hawthorne, but I need to tie up a few loose ends. Meet you at the usual?”

“Right,” John said with an easy smile.

An hour later, going on their third round (Sherlock was still nursing his first after devouring an order of crisps), beneath the table John’s hand made an appearance on Sherlock’s knee.

Sherlock coughed into his beer. “John?” He asked quietly.

The hand disappeared. “Oh, sorry,” John commented, eyes slightly hazy when he looked over. Then his gaze fell to Sherlock’s mouth. “My mistake,” he muttered, wetting his lips before turning back to Lestrade.

That look was familiar. Achingly familiar. Ever since that first time, nearly a year ago, something had awoken beneath Sherlock’s skin that was difficult to ignore. He felt it come and go in low intensities, a rush through his blood whenever John handled his gun or cooked them dinner, the juxtaposition between both facets of the man utterly riveting. At least once a month, he would feel compelled to take ‘matters into his own hands’, as it were. Once a week, he would find himself lingering on John’s physicality for a moment too long, when before he didn’t notice the way that his forearms flexed, or how his jaw clenched, or how his arse looked in his favorite pair of third-date jeans.

Though, unsurprisingly, the most attractive part of John Watson was how loyal he was to Sherlock, alongside his unexpected intelligence. Leave it to Sherlock to feel his mouth go dry when John slipped into doctor mode, or whenever he let show how fiercely protective he could be. And now, after months of dormancy interrupted only by cases and alongside growing friendship, John didn’t seem… opposed to a repeat performance of that first drunken night.

Sherlock swallowed another gulp of beer. Heart in his throat, he placed his own hand on John’s thigh.

John’s legs opened automatically, and his sigh was barely audible. He turned his head to look at Sherlock in surprise.

“So, then, how are you two?” Lestrade asked suddenly, drunkenness making him unobservant. Well, more so than usual.

Sherlock couldn’t escape John’s gaze if he wanted to, surprise already morphing into fire. “We’re fine,” Sherlock said simply, knocking back his mug to finish off the rest of his beer. It was disgusting, as usual, but it gave him a rushing buzz that sang behind his eyes. “Are you quite ready to leave yet, John?”

“No,” John immediately replied, lips quirking and eyes unwavering. Along with intoxicated, it seemed as though he was also feeling a bit _mischievous_ this evening. “I think I’d like another round.”

“Mm,” Sherlock hummed, narrowing his eyes. His hand on John’s thigh creeped up higher. “Then I think I’ll go to the loo, then, before I take my leave.”

He slipped away all at once, trying not to linger before winding around people on his way to the bathroom. His seduction techniques were rather rusty, after all, if they could be called that. When he reached the bathroom, he paused to listen over the slight chatter.

“I’m going to use the loo too, actually,” Sherlock heard John announce, terribly transparent.

_Perfect._

 

*** * ***

 

Sherlock was knocked hurriedly into the bathroom wall before the door even closed, lips unyielding against his neck and hands already at his fly. John’s stubble dragged against his skin roughly. “Eager, are we?” Sherlock gasped.

Then John’s hand was gripping his hardening erection inside of his pants, and any upper hand he hoped he had had suddenly collapsed. “Thrilled,” John growled, his other hand reaching up to thread into Sherlock’s hair and _pull._

Sherlock made an embarrassingly high noise that John quickly swallowed down in a nipping kiss. “Quickly, now,” he warned, shucking down Sherlock’s trousers and pants only far enough to free his cock. His hand was sliding in a hot grip with delicious heat. “We can’t be gone long.”

“Then keep doing what you’re doing,” Sherlock managed between his teeth, head knocking back into the wall. John huffed humidly against his neck, and he released Sherlock’s hair to yank down his own trousers.

Both men groaned simultaneously when John gripped them both in his hands. Sherlock sighed breathily and gripped John’s shoulders, and John had his lips and tongue and _teeth_ attached to the juncture of Sherlock’s neck. Together, the shallow thrusts of their hips gained an aligning rhythm.

“John,” Sherlock couldn’t help but murmur, head dropping until his cheek pressed against the other man’s temple. John’s hands bumped over both cocks to spread hot precum, before gripping again with increasing speed. His wrist twisted at the top, and Sherlock bucked his hips.

John tilted his head up to capture Sherlock’s mouth with a slight smile, stubble catching again. After this, Sherlock was sure he would be red-faced and raw from the burn, but he didn’t mind. It was fine. All fine. John’s hips were losing their rhythm and his mouth stilled against Sherlock’s until they were just barely touching, sharing hot breath. “I’m,” John whimpered.

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, hands dropping so he could grab John’s arse and press them closer. At that, John came with a hiss between them, slicking and tightening his grasp until Sherlock was positive that he only needed another stroke to completion. When John halted his movement, Sherlock protested and went to finish himself off.

“No,” John said immediately, pushing away Sherlock’s hand and only releasing himself so his hand only gripped Sherlock’s cock. “I owe you one, remember?”

Sherlock was surprised John still remembered that first time, but the emotion was short-lived and soon morphed into a dizzying burst of pleasure as John mouthed his nipple wetly through his thin shirt. He came with a cut-off groan, unable to stop himself from seeking John’s mouth out again and pressing them together as if he required it like oxygen. His hands slid off John’s arse to dig his fingers into his back.

“Brilliant,” John murmured against his lips. After a moment of shared breath, John released them both with careful movements and grabbed a paper towel to clean them up. He turned around to wash his hands in the sink, and Sherlock couldn’t help himself. “Never happening again, right?”

“We’re both drunk,” John commented without heat. He was doing up his trousers, but he wasn’t avoiding Sherlock’s eyes in the aftermath, oddly comfortable. He met Sherlock’s eyes with an easy smile. “We couldn’t stop ourselves, yeah?”

Sherlock suddenly _wanted_ John to be upset. To be his awkward, avoidance-prone self, to not meet Sherlock’s eyes and to act like this wasn’t nothing.

But it _was_ nothing, Sherlock supposed. So, despite the fact that he wasn’t sure if he could even classify himself as ‘tipsy’, he nodded back and stuffed himself back into his pants. “Yes. Drunk.”

John gripped his bicep with a grin, steadying himself and looking for all it’s worth as if he didn’t just have Sherlock’s cock in his hands. Back to three-continents Watson, it seemed. That’s all Sherlock seemed to be, anyways. A drunken conquest. “Great,” John replied. “Ready to go, then? I’m sure you’re itching to get out of those clothes.”

The words were utterly innocent. Sherlock’s heart sank even more. “Yes. Ready.”

 

*** * ***

 

That night, Sherlock awoke from sleep with the most painful feeling he’s ever had, right inside of his chest. Like every pulse of that dreaded muscle in behind his sternum was killing him rather than keeping him alive.

When he thought of John, it squeezed harder with a vengeance.

He didn’t love John. He wasn’t dense enough to know that he wasn’t too far off, but at the moment, it was just a friendship that lived off of the way they suited each other. It thrived from John’s sudden bursts of intellect and Sherlock’s reluctant moments of sympathy. They suited each other, even (unsurprisingly) in the most intimate of ways. He cared for John. He didn’t want a relationship, per say, but he selfishly wanted John to stop looking for his little girlfriends. No, he didn’t love John, he decided, because he hadn’t the faintest what love was even supposed to feel like.

Not only that, but the most important piece of information: John didn’t love Sherlock.

Hell, he had to be _drunk_ just to drop his aggressive ‘not-gay’ mantra and give into his attraction. Where every heated look, every touch, every moment of tension was immediately disregarded depending on sobriety. Was John the sort of person that could feel attraction on a whim? Where he could see Sherlock just as another bloke until he decided he was good for another shag, and then he was ‘beautiful’ and ‘brilliant’?

Because Sherlock couldn’t. John could barge in right now and slide into bed without a word, and Sherlock would be at his mercy. It was pathetic, but true.

So, where would Sherlock go from here? Desperately awaiting for the next moment John got drunk enough to forget his standards? Probably. It was awful and depressing and frankly appalling, but it was the truth. He didn’t have the restraint to refuse John, and he didn’t have the courage to confess these revelations to him.

Sherlock slid out of bed and dug into the shoebox beneath his bed. This was a problem that demanded his last supply of cigarettes. He chain-smoked them out the window until dawn.


	3. two days before the fall

**3.**

Sherlock had a predicament. 

It had been 8 months and 4 days since Sherlock last had sex with John. Which was fine (not fine) in it’s own right, since John fell into a string of girlfriend after girlfriend in the time given, all of whom he could have sex with while sober. Which was obviously the healthier option, Sherlock supposed, so he pretended as if he couldn’t hear the quiet moans through the ceiling, nor see the lovemarks that John liked to have peppering his jaw. 

That first time, almost a year and a half ago, John had worn a scarf to cover up Sherlock’s marks despite it being too warm outside. But Sherlock digressed. 

No, the real issue here was  _ not _ the fact that they hadn’t had sex in months. Sherlock could (and had) dealt with that, too caught up in Moriarty and casework and  _ distractions  _ to pay it too much mind (wrong, but believable). The problem was that they last had sex in a pub bathroom, and Sherlock was 75% positive that Moriarty was coming in for his final move sometime in the coming weeks. It wouldn’t make sense, which was why Sherlock suspected the move in the first place.

Sherlock didn’t know what that meant for him, but several of the many possibilities that could arise included him having to disappear. Call him sentimental, but he needed to have one last time with John. Just in case. 

God, he sickened himself, but he just  _ had  _ to. He craved John like caffeine, or even cocaine on the more boring of days when all Sherlock had to focus on was John, John,  _ John.  _ Sex between them may be meaningless for John, but not for Sherlock. 

Every time he saw one of John’s  _ women  _ on his arm, all he could think was:  _ Has he made the same noises with you as he has with me?  _

The answer would always be yes, Sherlock supposed. Regardless, the clock was ticking, and he knew precisely what he had to do to get what he wanted. He hadn’t manipulated John in quite a while, but this was for both of their benefit. At least, that’s what Sherlock liked to tell himself. 

No, this meant Sherlock needed to get John  _ drunk.  _ Which led to him commenting offhandedly over lunch that day, “Oh, John, have you talked to Bill Murray recently?” 

John immediately halted his typing, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. Oh god, was Sherlock really that transparent? Or was John just becoming more observant? “Why?” He questioned suspiciously. 

Sherlock narrowed his own eyes back and tilted his head, making himself seem both surprised and curious by John’s distrust. “I saw he commented on your blog earlier today that he was in London, and if you decided to, say, meet up for a drink later, I would ask for you stop to buy milk afterwards. We’re out.”

John rolled his eyes, setting aside his laptop to stand and stretch. “Of course we’re out of milk,” he grumbled. “We’re always out of milk. And no, I wasn’t planning on calling.” 

“Should be fun,” Sherlock commented offhandedly, eyes glued to his own laptops screen. He didn’t even have to glance up to ascertain that John was staring at him. 

“What are you trying to pull?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes with a huff. “Because I’m always trying to ‘pull’ one over on you, is that it?” 

John headed into the kitchen. “Yes, right, that  _ definitely  _ tells me you’re planning something,” John said pointedly, though without heat. He was antsy after over a week of no cases, Sherlock decided, as he was currently wiping down the already-clean counter. Well, clean-ish. “You know,” he called over his shoulder, “If you promise that you’re not trying to get me out of the flat to burn any more of my jumpers, I think I will give Bill a call, actually.”

Sherlock schooled his face to betray none of his delight to instead feign a scowl that wasn’t fully pretend. “I haven’t done that in over a year,” he protested. “When are you going to let that one go?” 

“When I get back the jumper that my late nan had knit me,” John replied breezily. 

Sherlock immediately sobered, sinking lower into his chair. “I told you, I  _ am  _ actually sorry about that one,” he admitted. 

Then John was beside him, patting him twice on the shoulder before reaching for his phone on the desk. “Don’t be,” he said. “It was terribly itchy anyway.” 

And just like that, he was calling his friend Bill Murray, asking if he’d be up for a drink later. As expected, he was available. Sherlock hid his smile behind his computer screen and felt his blood awaken once more in anticipation, as though he was addicted and he was about to receive his fix. 

He realized later that that was a perfectly apt comparison.

 

*** * ***

 

While John was off at the pub with Murray, Sherlock had planned the rest of the evening down to a T. 

First, he had cleaned his room spotless. The last time they did this in 221B they were in John’s room, but Sherlock didn’t want to have to help John up a flight again, which would just exhaust them both (which didn’t seem to matter the first time, but, well). He hoped things would move along before the bedroom stage, to be honest. 

Second, he prepared himself. After a shower and vigorous scrubbing, he laid on his bed and opened himself up with a generous amount of lube and three fingers, hissing slightly at the burn. There was nothing outside of the discomfort yet, but if he remembered correctly, anal sex during his drug-fueled days were immensely pleasurable. 

The cocaine may have had something to do with that, but regardless, tonight it would be John. Just John. If everything went to plan, at least. 

Third, Sherlock settled in the most seductive way he could manage without feeling ridiculous. Luckily, John didn’t seem to get turned on by classical means, at least when it came to Sherlock; hell, John had jumped the man when he was caked in dried mud. So Sherlock dressed in pyjama bottoms with his dressing gown draped open, shirtless beneath and bottoms hung as low as he dared. He stretched himself on the sofa, arms behind his head and gown hung around him to emphasize his torso. He thought he was too thin, but John didn’t seem to mind, after all. 

Earlier, Sherlock had applied lip balm that was said to ‘plump his lips’. Immediately afterwards he had rubbed it off with his forearm in disgust, chastising himself for being such an  _ adolescent  _ about this. 

Sherlock heard John before he saw him, his trod heavy on the steps. When he finally entered, he had his eyes set on the kitchen. Sherlock cleared his throat noisily, and John froze and searched the room until his eyes landed on the couch. 

_ Now.  _ “Oh, hello John,” Sherlock greeted, turning his voice deep until it was only a rumble (which hurt his vocal chords a bit to do, but that wasn’t the point).

John blinked, once, with a sway. Sherlock could see his expression darkening from familiar desire. John went to take a step forward, but then he closed his eyes with a pained look as if he was chiding himself. Without a lasting look, he spun his heel with a stumble and marched back out the door. He was on the second flight of stairs, not the first: going to his room, then, not back outside. 

At first, Sherlock didn’t know what to do. This should have worked, and it was almost worrying that it hadn’t. 

Then Sherlock felt utterly embarrassed. Did John see through the facade? Did John see what he was planning and refused as nicely as he could? Oh, god, when had Sherlock turned this pitiful?

Before he knew it, his legs were swinging off the couch and bringing him towards the doorway, only slowing slightly before taking John’s steps quietly one at a time. Sherlock felt ice in his chest, as if his rib bones had turned into spiny fingers that were slowly curving inward, pinching his heart. When had he become such a romantic? It was utterly disgusting. 

When Sherlock reached the top step, he hesitated. What if John had realized how wrong all of this was? What if Sherlock was the obsessive ex in this scenario, practically begging for something John didn’t even want to provide? 

Heart sunken further than it’s ever felt and something embarrassingly like  _ tears  _ biting at his eyes, Sherlock thought to himself:  _ Idiot  _ and went to turn downstairs. 

And then a voice came through the closed door. 

“If you come in here,” John said evenly, words only barely unsteady, “I won’t be able to let you leave.”

Hope blossomed in Sherlock’s blood, eyes widening at the implications of the words. He swallowed, and brushed the doorknob with the back of his knuckles. “Is that a promise?” 

A sigh, and the sound of padded footsteps. The door opened slowly, and John stepped out of the way to let Sherlock enter, still fully clothed sans shoes. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said sadly. 

There wasn’t fire. There wasn’t a frenzied flame or a sputtering eruption. There was only heat, John’s rough palms hot and dry as they dragged across Sherlock’s collar, pushing his dressing gown off of his shoulders and letting it flutter to the floor. His hands ran down his abdomen, only stopping at his waist to knead into the skin above his hips. He was swaying where he stood, so Sherlock pressed him against the wall to keep him steady, pushing his thigh firmly into the vee of John’s legs.

“Mmm,” John sighed, his fingers teasing beneath his waistband at the small of his back and his other hand tangling at the base of Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock bowed down to kiss him, hands unhurried at the buttons of his cardigan between them. 

“What do you want to do to me, Holmes?” John murmured. 

Sherlock flushed at the petname, hands stilling between them. He tilted their foreheads together and carefully reached behind him to the hand at his back, fingers over fingers as he brought their hands further down slowly, past the waistband and against…

John hissed, stilling their hands and nudging Sherlock’s head back so they could meet eyes. “Are you… well, d’you…” 

Sherlock released his hand and finished unbuttoning John’s cardigan, splaying his hands against the shirt underneath. “I want to,” he muttered, face still flaming. 

John sucked in a breath, eyes unfocused and hand creeping out of Sherlock’s bottoms to rub up his back. He nodded, eyes seeming to flicker over every part of Sherlock’s face. “But, er, wouldn’t you rather… not me?” 

Sherlock felt his heart in his throat. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he lied. 

A beat, and then John kissed him suddenly, tongue sliding and hands back down to Sherlock’s hips, tugging at his bottoms. “Right,” he agreed. “Come on, there’s a perfectly comfortable bed waiting for us.”

Sherlock had no idea how wonderful it would feel to have John on top of him, pushing and biting and in control, and he was glad that he would be able to experience it. Just in case it was the last time. On that morbid thought Sherlock dug into his pocket, pressing the contents to John’s palm. John visibly swallowed at the sight, but helped Sherlock shuck his bottoms all the same. 

When he touched Sherlock’s entrance, fingers slicked and purposeful, he leaned back in surprise. “You’ve already… prepared?” 

Shifting uncomfortable, Sherlock averted his eyes, hand circling the exit wound scar on the back of John’s shoulder. “Yes, well.”

“You planned this,” John accused, but his fingers pushed in all the same. Other John loathed being manipulated. But this John,  _ Sherlock’s  _ John, only crooked his fingers until Sherlock saw stars. “Don’t do that again,” John grumbled into his ear. “This is the third time too many.”

John’s erection begged to differ, coarse through his jeans. Sherlock could have bit something back, he really could’ve, only John added another finger and he wasn’t sure if he could find words anymore. 

“Too many clothes,” he eventually managed, tugging at John’s shirt impatiently. He was panting and achingly hard, sweat sticky on his skin and blood thrumming thickly. John complied, stripping himself with as much dexterity as he could muster. He opened the condom packet with  his teeth, spitting the spare foil off to the side along with the empty packet. He rolled the condom on in an expert move, using the rest of the lubricant to slick himself considerably. 

He stuffed a pillow beneath Sherlock’s hips. At that move Sherlock was going to ask if John had done this before, penetrative sex with a man, but then John was pushing into him with a gravelled sigh and Sherlock made an embarrassing noise that seemed to prompt John to hurry, snapping his hips in the rest of the way in a fluid motion. Sherlock’s noise turned pained. 

“Sorry,” John muttered immediately, eyes squeezed together and lip bitten. He pressed his face into the juncture of Sherlock’s neck. “Should I stop?” 

Don’t you  _ dare.  _ “No,” Sherlock said between his teeth instead, legs tightening around John’s waist and nails scratching lines across his back. “Keep going.” 

John rocked into him, though there was barely any space between them to move. Standing upright, the two had noticeably different heights, but Sherlock’s was mostly in his legs. Like this, locked together from the waist up, they were level. John leaned back to brace his forearms beside Sherlock’s head, face beautifully contoured in a pleasure that seemed almost painful. 

Sherlock was struck with that feeling, the constant ache in his chest that came from knowing the John Watson that only he knew, the one beneath the cozy jumpers and the milky tea. He brought his hands to cup John’s jaw, drawing their lips together with a sudden, desperate need. 

Sighs were passed between lips, groans felt through chests more than heard by throats. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up,” John admitted with an airy chuckle, fingers tangling into Sherlock’s curls. 

Sparks flew from the fire inside Sherlock, and he reached down impatiently to grasp John’s arse, pulling him in as deep as he could go. “Me neither,” he agreed. Every thrust, the delicious friction between them brushed his cock, mesmerizing heat erupting each time John hit that certain spot within him. He could go forever, and he could go only seconds more. 

John grabbed his cock from between them, stroking in rhythm with his hips. “ _ John, _ ” Sherlock bit out, fingers dragging. Oh, he was close. And then John twisted his hand around at the head and Sherlock was gone, throwing his head back and feeling every muscle of his body tense and shake. He keened from somewhere deep in his chest.

John followed soon thereafter, forehead burrowing into the space beside Sherlock’s neck and mouth locking wetly on his collarbone. He was holding back his groan, instead breathing a hefty exhale as his hips bucked brokenly into Sherlock, beautifully firm. 

It was quiet save for their labored breaths. This time, it was Sherlock sighing into the air, “Brilliant.”

“Yes,” John agreed weakly, squeezing Sherlock’s flank once, twice before pulling out of Sherlock and standing with popping joints. In a haze, he cleaned Sherlock with a rag and disposed of the condom, practically falling into his bed afterwards and burrowing underneath the comforter and sheets like a bear. 

Sherlock wanted to sleep here. He felt drunk himself, as if he couldn’t stand even if he wanted to. But he did, eventually, rolling off the bed and stumbling a moment from the sudden change of direction. 

“You can stay,” John said from beneath the covers, voice already drowsy. “If you’d like,” he added. 

Sherlock would like to. Oh, how he’d like to feel John’s arms around him, to map every feature of John’s topography without having to be inside the throes of passion to be given the privilege. To watch him awaken from sleep as close as he could ever be allowed, to press them together until John gained an addiction, similar to Sherlock’s. 

But he was afraid. Afraid of what the real John would say, how he would react to a man he was no longer attracted to in his bed, when he was completely sober and regretful. 

Sherlock had no room in the most intimate parts of John Watson without stipulations, after all. 

“I have experiments,” Sherlock lied, gathering his pyjama bottoms and gown. He pulled them on in quick secession, afraid to look back to the comfort radiating from John and his bed. He hesitated before he walked out of the door. “How about… tomorrow night we go to Angelo’s? He hasn’t seen us in a while, is all.” 

“Mmm,” John hummed. Sherlock supposed it was an agreement. He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him in a move sharply reminiscent from their first night together. That night, John had called him beautiful and had writhed beneath his hands. Sherlock clung to the memory as if it was water and he was dying of thirst.

 

*** * ***

 

The next day, Sherlock and John hold hands (due to handcuffs) and Moriarty broadcasts him to the world as a fake (which he isn’t sure is a lie or not). And then Sherlock kills himself in front of the only man he’s ever and will ever love(d). 

Afterwards, Sherlock asks the John in his mind:  _ Aren’t you going to call me brilliant? _

Mind John only shakes his head.  _ You’re an idiot.  _ He says sadly.


	4. the night sherlock returns

**4.**

Sherlock wasn’t brilliant.

That much was obvious, if his busted lip and broken nose were anything to go by. To be honest, he had _thought_ he was, in the beginning. Four months in, the brilliance and rush of the chase dimmed until it was lackluster. A year in, he was dreading every next location, every new identity. The men and women that he’d killed weighed on him, scarred him alongside the deep cuts and lashes that decorated his back. But there was a motivator, at least.

John.

All he had thought about was John, and that singlehandedly drove him into completing the mission. How John smiled at him when Sherlock said something that shouldn’t have been funny, how he ordered extra chips whenever he needed to eat during a case so Sherlock could pick off his plate, how he could say exactly the _right_ (or wrong) things during Sherlock’s fits of boredom.

When John gripped his hips, heartbeats shared through chests and mouths breathing into each other.

At that moment, the wounds on his face stung brighter.

“I suppose things didn’t go exactly the way you predicted?” Mycroft asked, perched in the armchair (John’s chair) when Sherlock arrived at 221B. His greeting to Mrs. Hudson went better than he planned, even if she had screamed and promptly fainted. However, he didn’t have the patience to talk to another living soul at the moment.

Mycroft knew that, apparently, as he added: “Doctor Watson has a stunning arm on him, don’t you think? Or was that his forehead?”

“Fuck off,” Sherlock growled. After putting up his coat he fell into the couch, back turned stubbornly to his brother. “If you’re bored, go destroy another third world country.”

“But that’s already on the agenda for tomorrow,” Mycroft replied in false protest, clothes ruffling as he stood. If he got within kicking distance of the couch, Sherlock couldn’t be held accountable for what would happen. “For tonight, though, can’t you admit that perhaps I was correct?”

Prick. “Why would I admit that?” Sherlock muttered against the armrest.

“That maybe,” he continued, “Doctor Watson was not quite as thrilled to see you as you were to see him?”

Sherlock’s hands fisted into the cushion. He didn’t deign his brother with a response.

Mycroft switched tactics. “How’s the PTSD, then, brother mine?”

The more recent wound, the nearly-healed slice on his calf, stung in a thick shock of heat. Sherlock swallowed, throat suddenly full, and resisted a full-body shudder. “A mental incapacity and nothing more,” he said with a sniff.

“We both know that’s true,” his brother complied, “as much as you are now learning that it’s not very easily ignored.”

Sherlock sighed noisily and turned, sitting himself normally on the couch so he could level a glare. “Does your visit have a point other than voicing the equivalent to ‘I told you so’?”

Mycroft tightened his lips, studying him with a barely-there narrow of his eyes. Whatever he saw in Sherlock didn’t seem to be good. “I’m trying to tell you that John Watson will forgive you, given time,” he said quietly, voice turned down from its nasally usual into his more natural voice. It was achingly familiar. “Imagine if your doctor killed himself in front of you two years ago, and how you would be coping now. If you would still be alive, at least.”

“I would be able to see through it,” Sherlock protested half-heartedly.

“But if you hadn’t,” Mycroft continued, “Then how would you react to the object of your darkest demons for the past couple of years showing up, and then telling you the whole thing wasn’t real? The thing you’ve been tortured and plagued with being revealed as a lie?”

Sherlock didn’t have to think on it long, as it had been the popular topic to ponder the past few hours. “I would be overjoyed to have him back,” he said softly, defeatedly.

Mycroft sighed, expression unsurprised. “You would,” he agreed. “That’s where you differ from the good doctor, it seems.”

Oh, fuck it all. “In that I’m in love with him, you mean,” he said bitterly, averting his eyes from his brother to stare at the wall.

There was a pause, obviously Mycroft’s surprise. He didn’t know whether it was from Sherlock’s words, or the fact that he had voiced them. “In that he replies with anger where you would with forgiveness, when dealing with the other,” he corrected hesitantly. Mycroft was hardly ever hesitant. “I wouldn’t be so sure about your answer, Sherlock. Raw fury and seeming hatred can be just as telling as open arms.”

Sherlock didn’t reply. He didn’t have to, as Mycroft seemed to be taking his leave. “I’ll keep in touch,” Mycroft said, returning to his annoyingly posh exterior. “While you did excellent work in destroying Moriarty’s network, we both know that the man was popular enough to warrant admirers. I’ll alert you if anything arises.”

“Obviously.”

“Welcome home, Sherlock,” he called over his shoulder. “The worst is over, it seems.”

The door downstairs closed, and the flat fell into a deafening quiet. Sherlock stood with a pop and wandered over to the mantel, brushing his fingers over the layer of dust. Somewhere in there, John’s skin cells remained. “The worst is never over,” Sherlock muttered to the skull.

 

*** * ***

 

Hours later at approximately three in the morning, the front door opened.

At first, Sherlock didn’t notice, armchair pointed towards the telly and face propped in his hand. He had never been one to watch television, but here he was, eyes glazed over in insomnia as a ‘Captain Kirk’ manned the bridge of a highly illogical ship with negligible science backing its ‘warp speed’ factor. John had liked this show, he remembered.

And then he felt it, the patter of steps through the floorboards at his feet. They were sluggish and heavy, but not deliberately so. He closed his eyes in defeat, a juxtaposition to the speeding race of his heart.

_John._

He didn’t burst through 221B’s door. Rather, he creaked it open with deliberate slowness, as if he was leaning all of his weight onto it. When he closed it behind him, he leaned against it. Sherlock wanted him to slide down it until only his head was propped, akin to that day nearly three years ago (he had stopped counting by the exacts; he had let it slip to Mrs. Hudson before his death, and all he had earned was a pitying ‘Oh, Sherlock’). John held steady, relatively speaking.

“ _You,”_ he rasped, stumbling further into the room towards the chair. Sherlock muted the television and stood slowly, careful of the fracture in his rib still smarting from Germany.

He couldn’t meet his gaze, the anger beating at his face tangibly. “Me,” he replied, eyes trained everywhere other than the man just meters in front of him.

John was drunk. And god, Sherlock hated himself for it, but he felt hope blossoming in his chest at the fact. When John didn’t say anything, breathing labored and fists clenched at his sides, Sherlock risked his words.

“Have you come to hit me again?” He said brusquely, trying to make his composure arrogant and harsh. It came across as weak. The act couldn’t even fool Mycroft, and _he_ was across London.

That spurred John into action. He shuffled even closer, and despite himself Sherlock stepped back, legs knocking the back of his chair. John didn’t notice, stopping just a few strides away.

“How?” He uttered, voice breaking slightly.

Sherlock’s fingertips were numb. “It was… It was all science. First, I determined the height of the top of Bart’s from-”

 _“Stop,”_ John interrupted, voice commanding. Sherlock popped his jaw closed, and for the first time since John arrived, Sherlock met his eyes.

His breath felt knocked from his chest, air whooshing at the sheer feeling in John’s gaze, the raw emotion mixed with a distrusting edge that Sherlock immediately never wanted to see again. And it was aimed at _him._ Despite the fact that his death had saved countless lives and he would never regret making that choice, Sherlock desperately wanted to fall to the ground and beg for forgiveness.

But John didn’t forgive. On _that,_ his brother was correct.

“I mean… how could you do that?” John managed, eyes blurry and voice gruff. “To me? How… I thought I was your…”

“My _what?_ ” Sherlock asked desperately.

“ _Friend.”_

That stung with a truth Sherlock was almost afraid to admit. “A grave error on your part,” he admonished with a humorless smile. “I don’t have friends. High-functioning sociopath, do you recall?”

John exhaled heavily through his nose. “That’s not-”

“What have you come here for, John?” Sherlock had to ask, unable to keep the tearful edge from his voice. He wasn’t crying, but he might as well have been. “Came to yell, scream, sleep off a hangover?” Beside himself, Sherlock began to walk, closing the distance between them. When he was just a step away, he leaned down to level their eyes in a last-ditch effort to protect the little sense of self-preservation that he still had. He hoped he looked menacing. He knew he looked wounded. “Why. Are. You. Here?”

John closed his eyes, body wobbling from inebriation as he reached up to fist his hand into Sherlock’s shirt at his chest. “You know why I’m here,” he said quietly.

Instead of pulling him closer, John’s face twisted and he pushed him back, hand knotted in the fabric as he manhandled Sherlock against the front door. He didn’t kiss him, only left him there while he took a step back and started to undress.

“What I’m goin' to do -” John began, toeing off his shoes with barely-there coordination, “- is get myself undressed -” the socks were a moderate success, considering that he almost tipped over, “- clear off your desk by that window -” he fumbled with his fly, forgetting that he was wearing a belt, “- bend you over it -” off came the pants, too, where he was half-hard, “- and fuck you until you forget your own name.” He peeled off his jumper and shirt, and gripped the hem of his vest. “Does that sound like a plan?”

Sherlock’s mouth went dry. His chest was fiercely struck with that familiar all-encompassing pain, the one that ran alongside John showing any sort of affection, as twisted the interpretation. His eyes fixed themselves on John’s clavicle.

John hesitated with his vest, and his flaming eyes dimmed. “Tell me to leave,” he commanded with quiet fervor. “Tell me to put my clothes on and to go home, and I swear I will never expect this from you ever again.”

Sherlock inhaled sharply, and his hands slowly rose to begin unbuttoning his shirt. He met John’s eyes with a tight brow. “What are you waiting for?” He bit out, words much more solid than how he felt. “It seems as though we have a checklist to follow.”

John’s eyes darkened, and he flung off his vest and grappled Sherlock by his waistband, tugging both trousers and pants down in a jerking movement without undoing them. Sherlock had slimmed considerably during his time away, so his clothes hardly fit anymore. John went to brush off Sherlock’s half-drawn shirt, but Sherlock grabbed his wrist with sudden importance.

“Not the shirt,” he commanded in a decently-strong voice. Let him have this one thing, if John Watson was going to consume everything else. After a charged moment John jerked his hand from his grasp and nodded, once, before dropping to his knees and sucking down Sherlock’s cock.

Sherlock let out a groan, cutting it off at the end in a choke with John did something devilish with his tongue. There was the tear of foil, and John’s fingers were slick and probing at his entrance. Sherlock widened his stance automatically.

“John,” he sighed, which was rewarded with a twist of the fingers inside of him. He had nowhere to put his hands, so he settled on the doorframe above him, forearms flexing in a last-ditch effort to keep upright. When he was properly slicked and painfully erect, John dragged him to the desk and cleared it off to the side, pressing Sherlock down from the waist until his cheek was squashed against the wood. Another tear of foil and the wet sound of lubricant, and then John was pushing into him with an unyielding force.

It hurt. And then John muttered “Sherlock,” in such a small breathy voice, and the pain gave way into a much more startling hurt that pricked at the corners of his eyes. John began to move, and Sherlock lost himself.

He loved John with an aching passion, a fire that had reached its maximum and refused to extinguish. He loved him like mankind needed water, an all-encompassing thing that was without question and was determined in the very fiber of his being. He wanted him in every sense of the word, in every definition of ‘want’ and ‘lust’ and ‘love’. Sherlock was collectively the most selfish and unselfish man in the world when it came to John Watson. He would kill himself if it meant John could be safe, and he would writhe and tangle with him even though John was a happily taken man.

Sherlock wanted everything. He deserved nothing.

He pushed back impatiently. “More,” he growled, voice thick. If John Watson was going to tear down every brick of his foundation, then Sherlock Holmes wasn’t going down without a fight.

John gave him more.

Sherlock was pounded with delicious pleasure mixed with diminishing pain, his groans and sighs reverberating into the wood of the desk beneath him. He was thankful of his shirt, protecting John’s eyes from seeing the absolute disgusting array of scars and burns dancing around on the skin of his back. John would just forget himself and show a doctorly concern, a pity that Sherlock had no use of.

He wanted John like this, the John never shown to the public. The harsh and wanting thing, the one that called himself straight and fucked Sherlock into the table with abandon. When John reached around to circle Sherlock’s cock, both were not far from release. In the end, Sherlock wasn’t even finished coming whenever John gave his last thrust.

Afterwards, Sherlock tugged on his pants and kept his back to John, careful to hide his wet eyes and ruddy cheeks.

“I hate doin’ this,” John said eventually, words slurring slightly and voice deep in exhaustion. “I hate that it’s Pad-Pavlovian now, that I can’t have a drink anymore without thinkin’ of you. I shouldn’t be thinkin’ of you. It’s such a-”

“Go home, John,” Sherlock murmured, his own hands beginning to shake imperceptibly. He was on the verge of a panic attack.

“I was thinking of goin’ upstairs, sleepin’ all this off,” John muttered hesitantly. “Is that, well, I mean, would that be…”

“Yes,” Sherlock voiced. After a beat he heard the front door close gingerly behind him, and the familiar steps up to the level above.

Sherlock fell into his chair, arms wrapping around his knees, and tried to control his breathing. When that didn’t work, he let himself be felt and cried until exhaustion plucked him from the Earth like a piece from a chessboard.

 

*** * ***

 

“I saw the CCTV footage,” Mycroft said simply the next week, after the incident with the firepit and the train. Sherlock was at the counter working on an experiment, finding himself not minding the company as much as he should have. “A few days ago, I saw your Doctor Watson arriving at 221B and leaving the following morning. I suppose he has given you his forgiveness?”

Sherlock smiled mirthlessly. “Now, yes. At the time, not in the slightest.”

That dropped the smirk right off of Mycroft’s posh face. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find the words to say.

A rarity, one that Sherlock didn’t care about at the moment. “John wants primrose flowers at the wedding,” he said offhandedly. “It reminds him of the summers in Devon county with his grandparents. Mary told me that she would prefer flowers with more substance, perhaps roses.”

“Sherlock…”

Sherlock closed his eyes. “He will be disappointed. Not enough to call off the wedding, obviously. He loves her too much.” He opened his eyes, hands steady on his microscope as if he hadn’t just been near to breaking. “But I predict that she’ll incorporate primrose regardless. Because she loves him, as well.”

A hand pressed lightly on his shoulder. Sherlock didn’t even have the energy to shake it off. “I’m sorry,” Mycroft said awkwardly.

Sherlock didn’t reply, because there was nothing left to be said.


	5. when mary disappears

**5.**

“And I swear, whenever this baby finally comes, I don’t know if I’ll be used to the change in balance. I’ve been using her as a counterweight.”

Sherlock chuckled politely, settling on the sofa beside Mary after he finished cleaning the kitchen. Without John here, the mess piled up considerably, yet _John_ was the one complaining about it whenever he visited. Therefore, Sherlock made the flat look presentable each time he (they) made a visit. It was the only logical thing. “I can imagine,” he replied. “John’s late. Did he pick up the take-in, or shall I?”

Mary waved away the question, finishing her tea. Iced tea. When John warned that Mary had unexpectedly began craving the dreaded beverage, Sherlock made sure to keep it stocked at all times. “No, he got it. He just texted me, should only be a few minutes. But this gives me time to talk to you about something.”

Something in the words twinged at the coin-sized scar on his chest. “Oh?”

She leaned in closer, maneuvering around her large belly to tilt to the side until she fully faced Sherlock. Her eyes were unreadable, but her mouth wasn’t pursed and she didn’t try to straighten up to Sherlock’s sitting height. Nothing bad warranting her to attempt dominance, then. Sherlock let out an unperceivable breath.

What had he expected? Mary to bring up what happened over a year-and-a-half ago, the night John stripped him both mind and body and bent him over that desk _right over there_ and...? John had made it perfectly clear that it didn’t mean anything, same with all of the times before. Even at his stag night when both men were similarly inebriated and the possibility was there, John was almost aggressively ‘not interested’. It was not a possibility anymore, if him being drunk was ever classified as ‘interested’ in the first place.

It was just sex, the messy, horrid thing that made Sherlock’s palms sweaty and mouth dry when he thought about it. The messy, horrid thing that meant nothing to John. The thought of Sherlock’s one-sided _sentiment_ got repetitive, the number of times it came up (constantly), but he had to make it stick somehow. Sherlock had moved right along from the raw pain he felt with John in the beginning into a more dull, ever-present ache.

It was endurable, at least.

Mary brough him out of his thoughts. “Yes. It’s just, well, the baby’s due in around a month if everything goes according to plan, and… John won’t have much free time, you know. He loved the stag night you did for him, still talks about it. He says it was the most ‘Sherlock thing he could have planned’, if that makes any sense. Regardless...  I would like for you to take him out for a night of drinking. Just one more night. Let him have some fun before he’s all bogged down with Ellie and me.”

Sherlock tried to keep anything resembling horror from crossing his features before nodding. Another night of ‘will-he-won’t-he’, hyperaware of every move, and touch, and look. Wondering if that lean will turn into a kiss, or if that hand will reach over to knead his thigh. “Excellent idea,” Sherlock said with an easy smile. “I’ll plan it for next Thursday evening, he has Friday off that week if memory serves.” It did, of course. “I’ll make sure he gets home before midnight.”

Mary laughed a kind sound. “Oh, no, don’t worry about it. Wake up in Guatemala with matching tattoos, it won’t bother me. Just make sure he has fun and gets back to me in one piece, yeah? Oh, and preferably a small tattoo, if need be.”

John would get something medical somewhere on his back, perhaps the chemical compound for adrenaline (which he liked to doodle on spare paper) or the caduceus (morality), if so inclined. If even _more_ inclined, the kind of inclined where he couldn’t walk straight and giggled at everything Sherlock said, he would get the cap badge of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers on his bicep. Perhaps even something related to Sherlock, as John’s impulse decisions usually seemed to involve him.

“You have my word,” Sherlock said gravely, hand over his heart in pronounced sincerity. He then quirked his head. “Ellie, is it?”

“Elliot, for a girl,” Mary corrected, hand cradling her belly protectively. “It sounds more modern. John doesn’t like it. He wants something older, more traditional, like Beth or Eleanor. Could you imagine?”

At that moment, the door downstairs opened. The thump of familiar steps soon climbed the stairs. “I quite rather like Eleanor,” Sherlock mused, standing up and absentmindedly straightening his jacket. “That could also be ‘Ellie’, couldn’t it?”

Mary opened her mouth as if to reply, but then she closed it, thoughtful. “Hmm,” she hummed.

“Sorry, sorry,” John managed, both hands occupied with bags as he bustled into the living room. He unloaded onto the counter, rolling his left shoulder from the previous strain and striding over to Mary to drop a kiss onto her cheek. He clapped Sherlock’s shoulder as way of greeting. The touch lingered. “The line at the Thai place was awful. Were you both waiting for long?”

“No,” they said simultaneously, both blinking at him. John eyed them both for a brief moment, almost suspiciously.

“Right,” he said slowly. “Okay. Er, Sherlock, have you had anything interesting happen lately? How’d that case go the other week, the one with the cornfield?”

As John distributed the food, Sherlock fell into the story, reiterating the case in the best way that he could. He wasn’t John; he couldn’t make it exciting or suspenseful, his own words clinical and voice flat even when he got to the part where the murderer fell into a pit. But all the same, John watched him with rapt attention, forgetting his noodles in favor of falling into the spoken words, as well.

Sherlock figured that that was enough.

 

*** * ***

 

In the end, there was no night of fun. Because exactly one week later on a stormy Wednesday night, Sherlock got a call from Mycroft.

“She’s gone.”

Sherlock knew immediately who he was talking about. Who else? “Taken?”

“She left voluntarily, I’m afraid. Apparently an old employer had something of significance that prompted her to stop playing housewife.”

Wholly unsurprising, despite the fact that Sherlock hadn’t seen it coming. “How’s John?”

A knock downstairs, tentative and only barely audible above the rush of the rain. Sherlock closed his eyes with a quiet sigh. He was frightened to see what stood beyond the door, though at the same time he couldn’t stop the yearning, the call of his body to race down the stairs and wrap the man on the doorstep into his body. He craved to comfort, an awful, needy thing to want.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Mycroft said softly, and the line went dead in a fit of kindness. Sherlock lowered the phone to the desk, and shrugged on his dressing gown over his pyjamas.

There wasn’t another knock, a long enough quiet that by the time Sherlock made it down the first flight, he hesitated. Was he still there? With slow, careful movements, he unlocked and opened the front door.

John stood just close enough past the stairs to be under the building’s cover, sopping wet and shivering frantically. His hands were stuffed in his pockets and his eyes were downcast, as if he didn’t notice the warm light from 221 bathing him from the darkness. He glanced up at Sherlock, face unreadable and cold, an out-of-place and _wrong_ expression on such a radiant man. Not even his eyes, the turbulent pools that were always his most telling feature, showed his distress that must be drowning him from inside.

Sherlock felt like choking. He wanted to stumble forward and ease the pain, to pour meaningless comfort and platitudes and _sentiment_ until John was grinning and complaining about the milk and ruffling Sherlock’s hair and not _this._ Sherlock didn’t want to be staring at a man who had suffered so much that he had withdrawn into himself, afraid of what would happen if he showed his demons the the world.

Sherlock opened his mouth. He closed it. He stepped aside, and John shuffled in, closing the door gently behind him. The walk up the flat was silent and uncomfortable.

“I’ll get you some clothes,” Sherlock finally said, eyes careful on John for any sort of reaction. He just nodded. With tight lips, Sherlock ducked into his room for a cotton tee, pyjama bottoms and a spare dressing gown. John didn’t have any clothes left behind at 221B, having used his spare set after getting caught in the sewers during one of the last cases they were together on. One month and three days ago.

When he returned to the sitting room, John was leaning against the wall by the kitchen and had found the wine bottle in the fridge, studying it with blank eyes.

“John…” Sherlock began uncertainly, hands tightening slightly on the folded clothes in his hands. Without looking up John uncorked it and took a deep swig, once, before setting it on the counter.

“There,” he said in a rough voice. “Drunk.”

The realization was a spark behind Sherlock’s eyes, and he dropped the set of clothing into his chair. He leaned onto the back of it heavily, hands braced. “Is that why you came, then?”

John took a step towards him. And then another. A few more. A hair’s breadth away, body more cold than warm in such a state. “Sherlock,” he said, quietly. “No, it’s not.”

Then he was tugging at Sherlock’s sleeve and wrapping his arms around his middle, burying his face into his chest. He was like ice whenever Sherlock returned the embrace, achingly careful at the privilege of such intimacy, and then it was water unfurling from a dam whenever John let out a pained little sound, hands tightening at Sherlock’s back.

He was here for comfort. Sherlock made a mirroring sound, chest coming alive with the vibrant ache that arose whenever he was encountered with the love he felt for John. He scrabbled him closer until he couldn’t breath, pressing his lips to the top of his damp head and wishing for all the world that things were different. That Sherlock hadn’t died and that John didn’t have a murderous wife because _this._ This was right. If there was one thing in this bloody universe that was fair, it was the fact that Sherlock Holmes was meant for John Watson and who cared if the Earth circled the moon or the sun? What did that _matter?_

“John,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m happy you’re here.”

“Me too,” he breathed, arms winding tighter. “Me too. Just…”

Just.

 

*** * ***

 

They slept together. Purely platonic, an unspoken agreement stemming from a need of compassion and contact. On other sides of the bed, but with their feet brushing together under the covers. That was still a wonderful thing, Sherlock thought.

Hours before dawn, John thrashed awake with an inhuman sound, startling Sherlock who hadn’t been able to fall back asleep after awaking from John’s hand unconsciously brushing his own. Sherlock, alarmed, touched John’s shoulder and John rolled on top of him in a flurry, blindly wrestling his hands above his head and pinning them to the pillow. His knees caged Sherlock’s hips.

Heavy breathing, and Sherlock’s eyes were blown wide. John came back to himself in increments, finally relaxing himself with a defeated sigh. In the slack, Sherlock shifted and felt that John was hard.

“Oh,” he said, almost to himself. _“Oh.”_

John noticed, himself, and made to pull back. “No,” he protested in self-reprimanding. “I’m sorry, that’s… I’m not here for…”

But god, Sherlock was here. His blood was singing, his heart was trapezing in flips, a feeling not unlike adrenaline beginning to pulse. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that John didn’t love him back the way that Sherlock loved him. This little thing, this thing that was _theirs_ in a way that wasn’t quite correct but was _right,_ it was the most important. Desperately, Sherlock wound his fingers with John’s in their grasp, trying to convey with his body what words were failing to do.

“You’re still drunk,” he said, hips rolling up to make the briefest of contact. John’s mouth parted. Sherlock continued. “It’s comfort. A mistake too many, what’s one more?”

John’s face broke just a bit, and it was beautiful. It was a glimpse of the John that felt fierce things and wasn’t afraid to show it. “A mistake,” he repeated, jaw tensing and untensing. “Right.”

They fell together. Not in kisses, but in comfortable removing of clothing and warm, knowing hands. It wasn’t rushed, but it wasn’t slow, either. John was breathing in his ear, fumbling his hand into Sherlock’s nightstand and fingers coming back slick. Instead of touching Sherlock, though, he sat up and reached behind to prepare himself.

“John,” Sherlock whispered, barely breathing. He couldn’t think of what to say, so instead: “Shouldn’t I be doing that?”

John winced, brows crossed in thought. He reached his spare hand back into the drawer and tossed Sherlock a condom packet. “No need,” he managed. “I’m nearly finished.”

Sherlock’s mouth was dry, lips chapped. He fumbled the condom onto himself with uncoordinated fingers, and then reached up to run his hands down John’s neck. “Alright,” Sherlock breathed.

John wrapped his still-wet fingers around Sherlock’s cock, slicking it as much as he could. Sherlock made to rearrange them but John shook his head, already climbing back into his lap. “Like this, yeah?”

“John,” Sherlock breathed in agreement, hands bracing themselves on John’s hips. At this point, he didn’t care what his face betrayed. “Brilliant.”

John’s lips quirked, and that felt like a victory. He aligned their bodies and sank down, hissing through his teeth past the pain and heat and into pleasure. Sherlock wanted to meet him, to thrust his hips up into shared space, but he knew John needed this sense of power. To have control while everything else was falling.

John rolled his hips, and both men sighed. “The first time,” John breathed, speaking of a forbidden thing, “You sat on top of me. Not like this, but…” He shuddered, beginning a rhythm between them.

Sherlock couldn’t _not_ say it, not when John showed that he remembered events from one of the most memorable evenings of his life. “Moriarty said that he’d burn the heart out of me at the pool. You heard that, didn’t you?” Wordlessly, he brought his hand up to John’s chest, slightly to the left and pushing into the hammering muscle that kept this wonderful man alive.

John fell forward, bracing his hands on Sherlock’s shoulder, and his face twisted into something terribly vulnerable. “Sh-Sher-”

Sherlock spun them around at that, awkward and bony but successful when he got John underneath him and pressed their foreheads together. His hands reached up to trail at the emerging wetness on John’s cheeks, gentle as his hips pushed and pulled. “John,” he whispered, cradling his face. “John, John, John.”

“I need-” John began, locking his hands into dark curls and breath puffing in hot air. He tried to draw their mouths together, but Sherlock resisted with an instinct he hated with a passion at that moment.

But he knew it was right. “No,” Sherlock groaned, bucking his hips to wring a gasp from the man beneath him. “Not while you’re drunk.”

John closed his eyes, defeated. “I’m… not-”

“You might as well be.”

John cried out, hands scratching wonderfully hot lines down Sherlock’s back. His eyebrows were arched together, and his eyes squeezed shut. “Faster,” he breathed in lieu of a response.

Sherlock went faster and mouthed at John’s good shoulder when he finally came, emptying himself into the fire that joined them. A few jerks of his wrist set John off, pulsing around him and groaning out with a beautiful sound Sherlock hadn’t heard in far too long.

This was how they were meant to be, knowing each other in every way imaginable. Holmes and Watson, John and Sherlock. It felt right, a sense of elation in the release that came and went but was irrefutably there in the first place. In its place was surrender. John was looking at Sherlock with wide, guarded eyes.

“Your room is still available,” Sherlock said reluctantly. He rolled off to the side, perspiring skin sticking to the sheets.

John made his hasty retreat, not even bothering to grab his clothes. Sherlock cleaned himself up to the best of his abilities and just sat on the edge of his bed, unable to place his own emotions. He was somewhere between joy and sadness, as well as at a place far off of the scale.

Numb.

 

*** * ***

 

A day later, John moved back into Baker Street. A week, and he was chasing after Sherlock through alleys and skips. The most companionable they got were in the evenings, when nothing was exchanged between them but silence. John never got drunk and mused the idea of sex between them again, keeping their relationship as it was to the public.

It was an unspoken rule that they not bring up the more intimate ways they were together, and that heavy inebriation around the other wasn’t much of an option anymore.

Four weeks after their last night together, though, Sherlock broke that rule quite spectacularly.


	6. and then it's john's turn

**+1**

Okay, just let the record show that, no matter how bad it looks from the outside, John Watson was not a right bastard.

Sure, he wasn’t the finest bloke back in uni. Didn’t call a girl back here and there, might’ve shouted things he didn’t mean at his sister, didn’t visit his mum as often as he should. And, yeah, okay, maybe in the army he did particular things behind closed doors that he regretted later on, and didn’t hold back from voicing those regrets towards those… said… regrets. To their faces. So, okay, _now_ he was seeing where Molly was coming from.

“He _played the violin at your wedding,”_ she hissed, slapping on some gloves with an almost offensive fervor. John winced at the tone, keeping his eye on the door for Sherlock’s imminent arrival.

“Yeah, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

Molly was way past passive aggressiveness, now resorting to slamming cabinets and smacking down equipment. “ _You don’t kno-_ god, John! _He played the-_ okay. Has it ever occurred to you that Sherlock maybe, possibly, has the slightest amount of feelings for you? At all?”

John stifled a bark at that. “Sherlock? Feelings for _me?_ Have you met him?”

 _Sherlock’s hand, kneading against the skin over John’s heart as the flames rolled. ‘_ _Moriarty said that he’d burn the heart out of me at the pool. You heard that, didn’t y-’_

“Shut up,” John nearly growled to himself. At Molly’s simmering look, he tried to appease. “Okay, so there is a possibility… a _very_ miniscule one, at that. But I don’t… wait, where did this even come from, anyway?”

She turned away, fiddling with a microscope. “He told me, John.”

“Beg your pardon?”

She tilted her head to the side so that John was in her periphery. “He came to my flat last night, as drunk as I’ve ever seen him. He… he told me about the five times.”

Once, when Moriarty tried to kill them. Twice, after a case- _Three times,_ just before Moriarty succeeded in killing Sherlock. Fourth, the time that John most regretted, the day Sherlock returned.

And then the fifth time, almost exactly four weeks ago. John found that he wasn’t upset that Molly knew, only that she was angry. At _him._

“Yes, well,” was all that John could say, the wound still bright. Sherlock didn’t _want_ these things, these relationship labels or sentiment or… John. He didn’t want John, he had made that perfectly clear since day one.

“He played the violin at your wedding,” Molly repeated, though this time softer and voice thick with something sad. Despite himself, that pissed John right off.  

“I had to watch him _die,”_ he hissed back. “Sherlock, the man that I… the man who… I watched him _die._ And you helped him _kill himself in front of me._ ”

Molly visibly flinched, dropping a test tube on the counter. It didn’t break, but the glass hit the countertop with a sharp resonance, striking at John’s ears. He felt himself immediately regretting the words. “I’m sorry, Molly. I know that you weren’t… you were just trying to help him. I’ve long since forgiven you, I promise.” He sighed quietly, and said something that he never wanted to allow himself to say. “Molly, has it ever occurred to you that maybe those ‘five times’... they weren’t fun for me? I… care about him deeply. Far too much. But he doesn’t want me, and that’s fine. All… fine. He’s more than a… drunken fling, much more than that, but he doesn’t want to _be_ that more. With me.”

Molly flung herself around, eyes suddenly sharp and unnervingly Sherlockian on his face. “You,” she breathed. “You mean, that… are you saying…?”

Oh, fuck it. “I’m in love with Sherlock, yes. I have been ever since the beginning.”

Her eyes alit with an emotion so strong that John had to take a step backward. “Tell him,” she demanded, something fierce and out of character flashing across her face. “Do you have any idea the pain you’ve caused him? Just as he has no idea the pain he’s caused you? Oh, you _idiots!”_

John started at the insult. “Wait, that’s-”

“Molly,” Sherlock said as a greeting, pushing through the door into the laboratory. John kept himself from studying the man too hard, as he was afraid of Sherlock discovering exactly what was spelled out across his face. Luckily, as it’s been for the past few weeks, Sherlock paid him little mind. “How’s the samples? Did he kill his brother-in-law, or did I dig through an innocent woman’s garden for nothing?”

Molly opened and closed her mouth, schooling herself into something more professional with a lasting glance towards John. But he had slid out without a word, Baker street in mind and curses just on the tip of his tongue.

Why did everything have to be so bloody _complicated?_

 

*** * ***

 

Sherlock Holmes. Drunk last night and going to Molly’s, spilling out the secrets of the past, what, five years? Coming on six? _Why_ did he care that much? Memories came spilling in with such force, unwanted and full of remembered heat.

First;

_John, drunk out of his mind and pathetic with his obvious crush. He’d known Sherlock only coming on a few months, but the pool incident awakened something. A desperate need to throw everything out into the open before their line of work killed either of them. Thoughts of war, nightmares with Moriarty’s smile and explosions that smelled like chlorine. Frantic for reassurance._

_Crashing his lips with Sherlock. Oh, god, he had positively thrown himself at the man, the man who_ distinctly _told John that he was married to his work. And then, afterwards, Sherlock left in a hurry, trying to distance himself far away from John, who couldn’t keep his hands to himself._

_Stupid, stupid! What did John think was going to happen? Sherlock was going to stay for a cuddle, then the next morning they were going to skip out to a crime scene holding hands?_

_Pathetic. It wasn’t going to happen again._

Second;

_Oh god, but he loved Sherlock. The brilliant, maddening, whirlwind of a man, whose mind was sharp and full and who cared so strongly for others but was too afraid to show it. A drink too many and he couldn’t help himself, sliding his hand on his thigh underneath the table at that dinghy pub, Lestrade just an arm away._

_And Sherlock responded in earnest. He_ initiated, _even! What could have been a mistaken hand turned into a shag in the bathroom, and John was overjoyed._

_He’d tell him. They’ve known each other, been through so much together- John could tell him now, right?_

_‘Never happening again, right?’ Sherlock asked._

_John’s smile turned fake. Of course,_ of course _Sherlock wouldn’t want to do something like this again. He was more then a pull in a filthy bathroom._

_‘We were both drunk,’ he said, avoiding Sherlock’s eyes._

_No. It shouldn’t happen again._

And;

 _Okay, John really_ tried _this time._

 _Sherlock was there, draped gorgeously across the couch, the skin of his chest bare and his voice wonderfully…_ no! _No, John, don’t fucking jump him like an animal. He doesn’t… just turn around and go upstairs._

_And then Sherlock followed him! He creaked the telltale step up towards John’s room, and John felt his resolve breaking._

_‘If you come in here, I won’t be able to let you leave.’_

_‘Is that a promise?’_

_And fuck, that was the greatest night of John’s life. And then Sherlock left as quickly as he could, as if John was some shameful thing he didn’t want to linger on. God, John couldn’t blame him for that._

_Sherlock made very few mistakes, and those mistakes were usually ones that mattered the most. It was no wonder that one of them eventually ended up being John._

_John wanted it to happen again._

Stop;

_Pain was the only thing driving John, like hunger drove the undead and instinct drove the predator. Why was he here? Why did he come here, only to be faced with the ghost John had never even dared dream himself the privilege of seeing again?_

_He let sentiment get the best of him. Love he’d try to forget scorched the surface like flames fueled to the sky, and he loved him more than he’d ever thought possible._

_‘Tell me to leave. Tell me to put my clothes on and to go home, and I swear I will never expect this from you ever again.’_

_Sherlock’s face, angry, though his hands already beginning to undress himself. ‘What are you waiting for?’_

_Pain mixed with love into an indistinguishable, ugly thing, something that he couldn’t stop from pouring out. ‘I hate doing this. I hate that it’s Pavlovian now, that I can’t have a drink anymore without thinking of you. I shouldn’t be thinking of you. It’s such a-’_

_‘Go home, John.’_

_It’s such a bloody awful thing to think of someone this much, someone that you can’t have._

_John followed Sherlock’s wishes, at the very least going up to shut himself in his room. And if he cried himself to sleep for the first time since Sherlock died, then so be it._

STOP;

_‘A mistake too many,’ Sherlock had said, writhing up into John. ‘What’s one more?’_

_If anything was the most bloody opposite of a mistake in this fucked up world, it was_ this. _‘A mistake,’ John repeated, trying to keep the choke out of his voice. ‘Right.’_

_He wanted to kiss Sherlock. Awfully bad. They hadn’t kissed since before The Fall, and suddenly it was an utmost need that John had him in this way, had him with their lips pressed in such an intimate, damning act._

_But Sherlock refused. He didn’t want John, didn’t_ want-

_John fled up to his room afterwards, anxiety knotted in his stomach as if a physical ailment. Tears and anger and betrayal. Why did John have to fall for someone he couldn’t have?_

_This could_ never _happen again._

John forcibly pushed himself against the wall to jar him from those memories, eyes closing in defeat and head thumping painfully. That hopeless feeling unfurled again, the physical ache in his chest that seemed to hint at dread, but as per usual John swallowed it down.

Sherlock had called him a romantic, back during his wedding. How bloody right he was.

Later on, John let himself have a drink. He forbid himself from going overboard ever again with Sherlock in mind, but it seemed to be one of those nights that warranted a bit of numbing. He hardly noticed it whenever Sherlock finally arrived, deep into the nighttime and unsteady on his feet.

“Oh, John,” he greeted, surprising John with his arrival. John jumped and spun around, eying Sherlock’s obviously drunken frame with wariness. Molly’s earlier words rung again inside of his head. “Always a pleasure,” Sherlock continued, words slurred.

“Sherlock,” John replied hesitantly. “Are you… okay?”

Sherlock chuckled humorlessly at that. “You’re five years too late with that one, I’d say.”

He was hammered. His eyes were hazy and body swung, and he only had enough mind to hang up his Belstaff before stumbling further towards the room, all legs while he swayed. He was looking at John with utmost attention in such a state, the most he’s given in nearly a month. John didn’t blame him for the ignoring, but it still felt achingly wonderful to feel those sharp eyes on him once again, at whatever capacity.

Sherlock’s gaze dropped down to the scotch on the table, and his lips twisted. “Oh, we’re doing this tonight, are we?” To John’s horror, he shrugged off his jacket and tried to unbutton his shirt with lazy, uncoordinated fingers.

“Stop!” John cried, rushing forward before stopping himself.

Sherlock tilted his head, halting his hands on his shirt. “Oh. Do you want to do this part?”

John clenched and unclenched his hands at his side, something uncomfortable sliding along his spine. “Sherlock, I’m… we’re not going to. Do _that.”_

Sherlock hummed, but dropped his hands to his side. “Very well,” he drawled, shuffling closer. “I suppose you’ve come to your senses then, hmm?”

John felt his brows pull together, wary as Sherlock made his way across the sitting room. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he started, narrowly avoiding running into the chair, “That your subconscious has finally come to terms with the rest of your body, relinquishing whatever half-brained attraction you had somehow developed towards me. A human error in the first place, I’m sure.” His words were eloquent despite the drawn-out thickness of his tone.

John hardly even felt _buzzed,_ he was so sobered at the moment. “Sherlock…”

“I liked it,” he muttered, crowding John against the mantle above the fireplace, “I liked it whenever you got drunk. Don’t get me wrong, you completely ruined me body and soul each and every time, but I _liked_ it.”

John closed his eyes, mustering the restraint he hoped to god he still had. “Don’t,” he managed.

Hard arms reached up to wrap around John’s shoulders, tugging him into a surprising and dreadfully intimate embrace. Sherlock’s breath was shallow and hot against John’s neck, fingers hooking into his jumper. John couldn’t help the sound he let out, small and airy.

“John Watson,” Sherlock murmured into his neck, “it’s been my pleasure to be ruined by you.”

“ _Sherlock,”_ John hoarsed, arms moving on their own accord to curl around Sherlock’s waist and pull them impossibly together. He buried his face into the curve of Sherlock’s neck. “You...”

Sherlock’s hands dropped to John’s hips, gripping near-painfully into the muscles there. The earlier contempt to him was gone, replaced with softness and fragility, with no small amount of fear. “John,” he started, sounding subdued and much more sober than his trembling betrayed, “There’s something I… need to say.”

Molly’s words earlier wrung distractingly in John’s head, but he didn’t let them linger. He pulled back to look at Sherlock in the eye, hands trailing up to brace at his shoulders. “Yeah?”

“I…” He breathed, eyes dropping to John’s mouth and forehead leaning in to brush against John’s, “That is, I…” He fluttered his eyes closed, his nose slotting beside John’s, “You…”

Their lips brushed barely, the electric spike of contact, and John inhaled sharply through his nose and tangled his hands in Sherlock’s shirt to pull him closer.

“ _No!”_ Sherlock yelled, breaking free and letting John go altogether, eyes wide and chest heaving with his breaths. “No! I can’t… don’t you see, John?”

Past his surprise, John took a step further, letting his feelings bubble to the surface. “Don’t _I_ see?”

Sherlock was pulling at his curls, trying to pace but instead managing to stumble around uncoordinatedly, nearly tripping over his own feet. “Five years,” he said into nothing, hands insistent at his head, “Five years of this. Of the watching, of the wanting, of the letting you come home drunk and… and then not be bothered. Do you see now, John?”

John’s blood ran cold. Oh, fuck. “Sherlock, have I been… taking advantage of you?”

“ _No! And that’s the problem!”_ Sherlock nearly screamed, gesturing wildly at the flat. “I shouldn’t want this! I shouldn’t wish for you to get drunk so I can touch you, I shouldn’t think about you whenever you’re not here, I shouldn’t…” His eyes were red whenever he fixed them onto John. “I shouldn’t want you.”

 _“Then why do you?”_ John shouted back incredulously.

 _“Because you’re the only thing in this fucking world that_ matters _to me!”_

Sherlock’s face paled in horror, and then went utterly blank and vacant like the flip of a switch. John was similarly frozen, though what was once cold and sick along his spine was warming, turning into a sort of hope that he didn’t think he’d ever have. Didn’t think that he deserved.

“Sherlock,” John tried in a whisper, untrusting of his voice, “You…”

In quick, robotic movements, Sherlock grabbed his coat from the floor and stumbled out of the flat.

John tried to follow, calling out Sherlock’s name and pulling on his shoes with halfhearted tugs, but it was no use. When he stumbled out into the night air, roads at a lull and streetlamps flickering, it was to emptiness. If John hadn’t known this bloody man for coming on six years, he might’ve run around greater London to find him, but he knew that Sherlock was probably going to one of his boltholes to hide away for the night. John was supposed to work tomorrow; at that point, he’d sneak his way back. Proceeding to horribly avoid John for the coming weeks, almost definitely.

Well, John thought, lips twisting as he turned back inside. That’s just not going to happen.

 

*** * ***

 

As predicted, Sherlock returned the next day near lunchtime. His steps were quiet and stiff on the stairs, as he had most likely spent the night in less-than-ideal conditions. When he inched the door to the flat open, his clothes were rumpled and hair messier than usual. His face was calm, though he studied the flat with a cautious frenzy, meaning that he was making sure that he was alone. Which he decidedly _wasn’t._

As if from a movie, John was waiting expectantly for him at the table, chair pulled away so he was unambiguously facing the door. His legs were crossed, and he was holding a lukewarm cup of tea expectantly atop his knee. It was a touch dramatic, but that’s what he had to resort to now, wasn’t it? “Oh, Sherlock. Hello.”

He was frozen in the doorway, eyes dancing from John to the flat and back again. “You’re supposed to be at work,” he said accusingly.

“I took off today,” John said pleasantly. “We have a bit to talk about, don’t you think?”

Sherlock eyed the table suspiciously, and then flickered his eyes back. “Talk?”

“Yes,” John said without a glance. Turning his chair, he tapped the surface in front of him pointedly. “Sit.”

With slow, wary movements, Sherlock did as he was told, sliding into the seat opposite of John at the table. When John met his eyes, they were heavily guarded in a way that spoke wonders about his level of vulnerability at the moment.

John would have to be careful.

“Angelo’s,” John began, wetting his lips, “Do you remember our first… dinner there?”

Sherlock’s mouth was still in a slight scowl. “Yes, of course.”

“And what I asked you?”

He drummed his fingers impatiently. “Determining if I had any sort of significant other, a valid topic for new flatmates to inquire about.”

John chuckled, just a bit. “Did you even look at me? I wasn’t making small talk, Sherlock, I was…”

Slightly uncomfortable, he tried to gesture his meaning through his expression, but Sherlock just tilted his head blankly. “You were what?”

John refrained from a groan, and instead just exhaled heavily. “I was checking to see if you were _available.”_

Sherlock blinked once. And again, and again, and again. Soon his eyelashes were fluttering, a tell-tale sign that he was flustered. “C-clarify. Please.”

 _There he is._ John tilted forward, bracing his elbows on the table and perching his chin in his folded hands. “I was hitting on you, Sherlock. Quite successfully, I had thought, until you rambled about how _disinterested_ you were. In me.”

Sherlock muttered something incoherent. John leaned in further. “Sorry?”

“In all fairness, you hadn’t shot a man to save my life yet.” He was avoiding John’s eyes.

John smiled softly. “So it was then?”

Exhaling shakily, Sherlock leaned back into his chair, relaxing just a bit with a barely-there wince. John was sympathetic; sleeping in a bolthole was never a comfortable option. “The moment I realized the shooter was you, I…” He closed his eyes. “That was when I knew that you were different. Well, that and the first ‘brilliant’, but namely… It’s just, you’ve, well, I’ve never known somebody that immediately cared as much as you do. For me. Anyone that I can even venture to call ‘acquaintances’ took a… bit of warming up before getting anywhere close, to say the least.”

John felt warm from head to toe, but he kept himself from grinning, still somewhat cautious. “So, that’s to say that the first time we were, er, together, it wasn’t too… unexpected?”

“Oh.” Sherlock cleared his throat, showing John that he was self-conscious. “Well, while I was attracted to you, I wasn’t… physically attracted until that, erm. Night. The first kiss.” He was blushing, and his hands were fiddling in his lap. The rest of his words were quiet. “From then, it was like wildfire.”

The small, striking intimacy in his eyes, avoiding John’s as if the things he felt was shameful. Before he could mull it over, John blurted: “Let’s start over.”

Sherlock’s head shot up, surprise and (familiar) frustration lacing his features. “ _John_ , I think it might be a bit late for-”

John held up a hand, effectively silencing him. He then extended his arm over the table with a pleasant smile. “My name is John _Hamish_ Watson,” he said. “I am an ex-army doctor invalidated from Afghanistan, though I am reliably informed that I bring that up too often. I am attracted to adrenaline in the most unhealthiest of ways, I mother-hen too much especially if it’s in matters related to your health, and I’m quite distractedly in love with my best friend. Oh, and I also played the clarinet in primary school. How do you do?”

Sherlock’s face opened like sunlight breaking through clouds, holding an expression almost like revelation as he stared at John’s hand disbelievingly. His eyelashes were fluttering again. “John,” he whispered.

“Mm,” John hummed, hand perfectly steady between them.

He huffed out a broken exhale. And then, his large hand completely enveloping John’s, his mouth suddenly split into a blinding and achingly boyish grin, face painted in adoration. His eyes were swimming. It took John’s breath away.

“Pleasure to meet you,” he rumbled breathlessly, before tugging John forward with a jerk and crushing their lips together.

John made a needy sort of noise in his throat, like a man dying of thirst being given a river. Sherlock had released their hands so he could grip John’s head in his hands, pressing them impossibly closer even though there was a table between them. John hung his hands loosely from the other man’s biceps and opened his mouth, deepening the kiss skillfully and earning himself a thin moan. Sherlock tasted so deliciously familiar, he almost wanted to cry.

“I don’t make a habit of snogging with strangers I hardly know,” John managed whenever he reluctantly broke away for air.

An exhale against his lips. “It’s possible that you know me better than I know myself,” Sherlock breathed, looking at John as if he bloody owned the stars. “You love me.”

John smiled helplessly back. “Of course I do. I’m still surprised that you never figured it out, I thought I was being painfully obvious.”

“You probably were,” Sherlock said, unwinding them so he could walk around to John’s side, crowding him against the table. He reached up to swipe his thumb against John’s cheekbone, impossibly tender. “Unfortunately, whenever it comes to you I seem to be the biggest idiot in the world.”

“Second only to me,” John pointed out. Pulling in for an embrace, he wrinkled his nose when he caught whiff the other man’s curls. “Sherlock, no offense intended, but you smell like a dirty alley.”

John could feel a rumble between their chests. “Quite right,” Sherlock said decidedly. “I need a shower.”

Pulling back just enough, John looked up at the other man and slipped his mouth into a slow grin. “What a coincidence,” he nearly purred. “So do I.”

 

*** * ***

 

Sherlock Holmes underneath running water was always a sight to behold, but without clothes on it should be bloody illegal. His shoulders were broad and every inch of his body was sculpted as if drawn on paper, legs up to his chin and muscles beautifully defined. His wet curls fell charmingly against his face. John felt so unbelievably lucky to have those quicksilver eyes openly loving on him, the detective’s full attention somehow caught on John’s average form.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sherlock murmured, nails scratching lightly up John’s sides.

John furrowed his brows. “Like what?”

Sherlock blinked past the water, mouth pursed. “Like I’m the sun, or some other poetic rubbish.”

“But you are.” John was utterly confused.

Sherlock tightened his lips and burrowed his face against the curve of John’s neck, mouthing at the skin there softly. “You’ve no idea what you mean to me, do you?”

“Ah,” John sighed, knotting his hands into his hair and arching against him. “You haven’t let me know yet.”

A hint of teeth. “A shame,” he murmured. “I should probably show you, instead.”

His hand carefully wrapped around John’s cock, already half-hard, and John groaned from his chest. He pulled Sherlock back to nip at his lips, licking into his mouth and reaching around to splay his hands into Sherlock’s back. There was a discrepancy beneath his fingertips. Sherlock’s hand stilled.

“That’s…” he tried, suddenly unsure. He let John go completely, pulling away so that John had to drop his hands. “My back. It’s…”

There was something about his voice. Guarded, yet ashamed. Like he couldn’t tell John something. He should be able to tell John _everything._ “Show me,” John said softly. “Please.”

Without raising his eyes, Sherlock visibly swallowed and turned around. John stifled a gasp.

Lines of pale scar tissue whipped across Sherlock’s back, slightly raised but clean in execution. A few smaller lashes in a couple of places, thicker and straight from the stab of a knife. Small dots at his shoulder blades, shinier like burns. Cigarettes. Otherwise, there were a few less-noticeable nicks here and there, ones that John was trying desperately not to catalogue.

Relatively new, as they hadn’t silvered yet from time. Must have been from Sherlock’s time away. John had to look at it from a medical point of view, else he would be sobbing into his friend’s skin by now.

He could ask. He could turn Sherlock around and demand him to tell him what happened, to scold him for not showing John before, for not feeling as though he could confide such a secret in him.

He could be selfish.

Instead, he leaned forward and softly pressed his lips between Sherlock’s shoulder blades, arms winding around his middle to hold them flush. Cherished. He whispered into the skin there, “I’ve never been more obsessed with someone that I am with you, my Holmes. It’s always you.”

Sherlock tensed. At first, John was afraid that he’d done the wrong thing. But then, with a high-pitched cry, Sherlock spun around and captured John’s lips with his own, pushing him desperately into the bathroom wall. Impatiently, he yanked John’s legs up around his waist. John yelped but otherwise held on for dear life. “Sherlock, I don’t think this is-”

“With the level of-” kiss, “-friction on the tub floor and-” nip, “-our combined weight, the chance of slipping is currently at approxim _JohnohgoddoNOTstop.”_

John had aligned their erections and was beginning to tug, sucking a bruise into his gorgeously tensed neck. He had to remember this, John thought, if he ever wanted to get the infamous Sherlock Holmes to _shut up._ He didn’t see himself regularly wanting that despite how often he complained, but it was good to know.

It didn’t take long. Despite the five times they’d been together before, they’ve had years of foreplay. John pulled back to sloppily press their mouths together, hand speeding between them. Sherlock’s hands gripped John’s arse, and he started to grind them deliciously into the wall.

“Sherlock,” John sighed. “Sherlock, I need… _harder.”_

His hand was quick and tight around them both, but he needed something to push him over the edge. Just a little something, a tiny bit of-

Sherlock pushed their foreheads together, hips breaking into uneven rhythm as he came. “Oh, god, John,” he hoarsed. “ _I love you.”_

John froze, eyes widening, and he came with a drawn-out groan. He hit his head against the wall at his back, hands scrabbling against Sherlock’s shoulders as he rode it out. Sherlock’s hips were beginning to shake beneath them. John unwound his legs and carefully returned to solid ground again.

The water was getting cool, so they hurriedly finished washing up, sharing Sherlock’s expensive soap. “You love me,” John said finally, almost deliriously happy.

Sherlock’s eyes gentled impossibly further. “Obvious,” he murmured.

 

*** * ***

 

Late into the afternoon, curled warmly together beneath the covers, Sherlock was tracing John’s features with the tip of his finger. “It feels odd,” he admitted intimately into the quiet, “to wake up with you here.”

John was in that hazy state between awake and asleep. “Mm,” he grumbled. “Good odd or bad odd?”

“Idiot,” Sherlock admonished fondly. “Are you sure you’re not drunk?”

With a groan, John turned over until he was half-sprawled over the other man, pulling him closer wherever he could fit. “Already having second thoughts?” He nuzzled into Sherlock’s now-dry curls. “Too bad. You’re stuck with me, Holmes, always have been. Nothing you can do about it.”

Sherlock hid his smile into John’s cheek. “Damn. Oh, well. I’ll have to deal with it, I suppose.”

John swatted his arse half-heartedly, and their soft laughs mingled together into the sun’s dim golden haze. They slept until nightfall. And after that, well, life was just fine. All fine.

 

* * *

 

_You can coax the cold right out of me_   
_Drape me in your warmth_   
_The rapture in the dark puts me at ease_   
_The blind eye of the storm_   
_Let's go for a walk down Easy Street_   
_Where you can be reborn_

_So kiss me on the mouth and set me free_   
_But please don’t bite_

\- "Bite", _Troye Sivan_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas :^)
> 
> Yay, we finished it! I'm notorious for never finishing fics, so I'm glad I got this one done before series 4 (even though this last chapter took me nearly a month, so sorry about that one). 
> 
> I changed the title from 'let me be your taste test', in case anyone's confused. 
> 
> If you liked my writing or just Johnlock in general, please, follow me over [@chrysanthemumsies](http://chrysanthemumsies.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! I post little drabbles on occasion, and I'm open to prompts :>
> 
> Look through some of my half-written fics and if you like them, bug me for an update, haha. As always, drop a comment (or a tumblr ask) if you liked the fic, and thanks for reading!
> 
> As for the three episodes coming out during the next month... God help us all.


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